


and I can feel you reaching through the cracks

by birdlord5000



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, being honest and talking about feelings!, downtime, post-September, title is a CRJ lyric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:15:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22377064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdlord5000/pseuds/birdlord5000
Summary: On the ride back from September, Jacqui and Aria finally have a chance to talk
Relationships: Jacqui Green/Aria Joie
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14
Collections: Secret Samol 2019





	and I can feel you reaching through the cracks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Akyia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akyia/gifts).



> Happy Secret Samol to Akyia!! I hope you enjoy it :)

The trip back from September should have been quiet. It should have been like the trip there, but more hollow, what with their pilot not locked in memories but gone completely. But "should have beens" didn't hold up in the face of six newly-minted Makos and a Lazer Ted, not to mention their other new passengers. And so, when Aria and Jacqui should have been sitting quietly in separate rooms, too awkward to comfort each other just yet, they were instead clearing out one of the Kingdom Come's spare rooms to make space for people to sleep.

"I forgot to ask," Aria said, moving a cardboard box aside. The room had been serving as a storage closet for as long as she had been on it, "Where did you end up sleeping on the trip to September? I know that Orth took the couch most nights, but Mako and Cass didn’t say anything about you using their beds, and I know you weren’t in mine.”

"In the mech bay for the most part." Jacqui wiped a cloth over a little table that folded out from the wall. "I took turns sleeping in each of the cockpits. Stole a blanket from a closet somewhere and made do with that." She flipped the table back up and latched it in place. "I looked at some of these rooms the first few nights, but..." she gestured around at the piles of boxes, some toppled over and spilling paperwork and spare electronics. "I think the most habitable one was the one filled with potted plants and sun lamps but I uh, didn't want to piss the captain off." She looked away. "I can't believe that the four of you had so much junk. I almost thought this ship was just filled with half a dozen closets and nothing else."

"Funny story about that actually." Aria located the latch for the bed compartment and flipped it open. The mattress inside was missing, but at least it was a surface to sleep on, right? "This was Orth’s ship during the Golden War. Most of the junk is left over from back then. When Orth was the captain, this ship housed high ranking officers, y’know, the kind of people who all think that they’re important enough to deserve their own room. The thing is, the people that were assigned to the Kingdom Come on its last mission during the war were the kind of people that Oricon wanted to get rid of. So the last time they did a big retrofit of the interior, they made it so that everyone could have their own room, but the space allotted per person was pretty much the same as it would have been if they were just living in communal bunks.”

Jacqui huffed out a laugh. “Sounds like Oricon’s brand of petty bullshit.” She picked up one of the boxes and placed it on a stack that rose above Aria’s head. “Did Orth tell you all that? He doesn’t seem like the type to talk much about his past.”

“Not… directly.” Aria bent to pick up some loose papers so that she wouldn’t have to look Jacqui in the eye. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Okay um,” Aria shuffled the papers together and stuffed them into a box at random. “Have you ever heard of the memory farm? It’s back on Counterweight, in Centralia.”

“A few rumors, I think.” Jacqui sat down on the bed platform. “Mostly conspiracy theories about how some celebrities aren’t dead, they’re just being kept in medically-induced comas so that the government can steal their thoughts.”

“Wow, I hate how much of that is true.” Aria hopped up next to her. 

“Excuse me?”

“You want to know what I was doing before we left Counterweight?”

“Getting the shit beat out of you by yours truly?”

“No.” Aria laughed. “Well, yeah, but before that. The four of us, Mako, Cass, AuDy, and I, we were at the memory farm. Orth brought us there so that we could understand what kind of threat Ibex posed. We were reliving Jace’s memories. Jace Rethal. I saw the entire end of the war from his perspective.” Aria’s voice bounced strangely around the small room, she noticed. It made the tight space feel even tighter. “Orth told Jace about the room thing, so I guess that in a way he did tell me.”

Jacqui stared at Aria, who pretended not to notice. “And you’re okay with that?”

“I don’t know!” Aria groaned and put her face in her hands. “That’s the worst part. I grew up idolizing Jace, and then there I was in his head for what felt like months, and now I keep remembering things that I shouldn’t know. Did you know that Addax has a really cute high-pitched sneeze? I don’t even know if I’m the one who thinks it’s cute, or if Jace thought that and it just bled through.”

“The only way we can know for sure is by getting Addax to sneeze in front of you.” Jacqui said gravely.

“Oh shut up.” Aria smiled and elbowed Jacqui in the arm, an act she instantly regretted when the impact with the metal sent pain shooting up to her shoulder.

“You know,” Jacqui said, moving her arm around Aria’s waist, “back when I used to work with Jillian, there was this system that our employers had. If we got fatally injured in the field, it would send our minds back to home base and they would grow new bodies for us. The thing is, sometimes we would lose things in the transfer. Little bits of memory, nothing big, but sometimes I would make a reference to something I had said earlier and she wouldn’t get it, or I would ask who bought the new mug in the cabinet and it would turn out that I had. But even with those changes, it was still me. I’m sure of that.” 

Jacqui turned her head, and Aria suddenly realized how close their faces were. “So what if you have some extra memories? That just means that you have a broader perspective on the world. And hey, I bet you know some state secrets that you can take advantage of.”

Aria collapsed into giggles and used it as an excuse to rest her head on Jacqui’s shoulder. “You always know how to put a positive spin on things.”

“That’s me, miss optimist,” Jacqui said. “But seriously, now you know about as much about what happened during the war as the people who were there do. What’s something that the public doesn’t know?”

“Jace named his mech after a weird bird in an anime.” 

When Jacqui responded with nothing but a blank stare, Aria nearly squeaked. “What!? I’m sorry, the only stuff that comes to mind is really dumb and arbitrary.”

Jacqui broke into a smile. “You’re really cute when you’re flustered,” she said. Aria started to sputter, but she continued. “Also, that’s pretty funny. We could use that for blackmail, get Jace to give us some of his hero money.”

“I think that you have to be ashamed of something for it to be useful blackmail.” Aria deadpanned.

“Well, we’ll figure something out.” Jacqui jumped down from the bed and turned around to look at her. “C’mon, let’s finish up this room. I don’t want to keep sleeping in shifts.”

“You know,” Aria said as she hopped down beside her, “you can always share my bed if you want. It would be a squeeze, but it’s better than taking turns on the couch.”

Jacqui didn’t look back at her, but Aria thought that she could see a smile. “Oh thank god, I thought that I was going to have to break into your mech again so that I could get some rest.”

“Never again.” Aria placed a hand on Jacqui’s shoulder, got up on her tiptoes, and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Unless you really want to.”


End file.
